The girl had been walking towards me, swinging by its riband a garden hat, for the air was hot.  The dog ran to her, with a bark that might have been of reassurance.  She stopped, and, with a pretty shyness far short of embarrassment, said: 

“Are you better now, poor man?”

I mumbled something, I know not what, and she smiled and passed on.

Then I felt I would have given anything to live that moment again.

“Dolt!  Fool!  Jackass!” I called myself.  “What a baby she must think me!  ‘Poor man!’ she said.  Good heavens!  Does she think I am forty?”

And thus fuming at my tongue-tied awkwardness, I went along the path.

I walked up and down for some time, and was still pacing along with my back to the house, when I heard a light footstep behind me, and for a foolish moment fancied it was the girl whose aspect and kind words had lately put me in such a commotion.  But on turning about, I felt relief and disappointment mingled (the disappointment was, I think, the greater) to see that it was only Susan.

“Measter wants tha,” she said.

I stepped along in silence beside her, she taking three steps for my one, and giggling to sicken a man.

“Tha’lt never get a sweetheart,” she said by and by.

“Oh! and why not?” I asked.

“’Cos tha’rt such a great big feller,” she said.

“What in the name of all that’s wonderful has that to do with it?”

The minx looked archly up into my face.

“Tha’rt too high for a maid to kiss,” says she.

To this I made no answer, being no whit inclined to bandy words with this pert young housemaid.  And so we came to the house.

“We have been considering your case,” said the master, when I again stood before him.  “Are you still set on going to Bristowe?”

“Truly, sir, I have seen nought to change my mind.”

“You know you are miles out of your road?”

“’Tis through coming over the fields,” I said.

“Well, if you are bent upon it, I will furnish you with money enough to take you there, and trust to you to repay me in good time.”

“’Tis good of you, sir,” I said, guessing, and not wrongly, I think, at whose persuasion he made that offer.

Then I was silent.  The name “charity brat,” bestowed on me years before by Cyrus Vetch, still rankled in my soul, and though, now that I look back upon it, there was nothing that need have wounded my pride in accepting the proffered loan, I was loath to be beholden to any man.  Maybe my feeling on this point was complicated with another of which I was as yet hardly conscious; but certain it is that, after standing silent for a brief space, I said suddenly: 

“I thank you heartily, sir, but I had liever earn the money.”

“Pish, lad!” cried the gentleman. “’Tis easy to see you are not of laboring rank, and as for the money, I shall not break if I never see it again.”